swimming for life

Friday, August 03, 2012

Friday's Swim Report - It's not "Zoiks!" It's "Jeah!"

Lane 1 - BW Bloomberg posts "Swimmer’s 56-Hour London Odyssey Comes Down to Seconds. It took Ann-Marie Hepler 56 hours to travel from a remote island in the Pacific Ocean to the Olympic Games in London, where the 16-year-old swimmer spent just over 28 seconds competing in the pool. Hepler traded a 25-yard (23 meter) saltwater pool in the Republic of the Marshall Islands for a 50-meter one inside the 250 million-pound ($389 million) Aquatics Centre in the east end of the U.K. capital."

Lane 2 - LA Times posts "No medal, but a new life path for Scott Weltz. To say Weltz was a long shot to make the Olympic team would be a severe understatement. He never had won any event in a major meet. He swam four events in the 2008 Olympic Trials, finishing 30th, 38th, 65th and 67th. USA Swimming did not include his biography in its media guide for the Olympic Trials. Weltz stunned the swimming community by winning the 200 breast, and with it a ticket to the Olympics. "I’m just enjoying the ride," he said. "Obviously, I wanted to medal. But I’m not going to hang my head. I did the best I could. I had fun with it."

Lane 3 - USA Today posts "World records fall despite ban on high-tech suits. The first six days of the Olympic swim meet yielded six world records, a rate not seen since high-tech body suits were banned in 2010. "I'm very surprised," American swimmer Jessica Hardy says. "We didn't see any for so long. Having them all happen here at such an exciting meet is mind-blowing and really exciting."

Lane 4 - LA Daily News posts "Trojan Swim Club star Hardy never gave up on her Olympic dream. Long Beach Wilson graduate overcame mind-numbing adversity to make it to London. "I've really enjoyed the journey and I've had the biggest smile the whole time. There's definitely more appreciation," Hardy said. "For me, relays are for sure the best part of international competition. I just want to go out and put up a good fight."

Lane 5 - Jezebel.com posts "10 Reasons Why Ryan Lochte Is America’s Sexiest Douchebag..8. His art. He enjoys drawing "surrealist nature art," which, uh, looks a lot like stuff the pothead next to you in psych 101 drew when he was super bored."

Lane 6 - WSJ posts (w/video) "Underwater Robotics: How to Become the World’s Fastest Swimmer. A team of Japanese researchers developed a robot that may one day help answer the question on the minds of aspiring Olympic swimmers: How can I be the next Michael Phelps? Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have built what they say is the first humanoid robot that can swim underwater using all four limbs. The robot’s mission: to figure out the most efficient way to swim with the least amount of drag — or as the researchers’ paper puts it “address the problems inherent in human swimming.”

Lane 8 - The Baltimore Sun posts "Debbie Phelps wears duct-tape flower in apparent honor of McDonogh swimmer. Alec John Cosgarea competed for North Baltimore Aquatic Club, was a duct-tape artist. The flower is in apparent honor of Alec John Cosgarea, a 17-year-old McDonogh School swimmer who died July 9 after he lost control of his Ford Fusion on Greenspring Avenue and hit a tree. He was driving back to his home in Owings Mills after competing at a North Baltimore Aquatic Club meet at Meadowbrook pool in Mount Washington."